John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

The ending of a very short relationship can be totally devastating. (Published 9/9/2014)

Q:

I met someone last year around this time, our love was short lived but filled with some of the happiest hours of my life. He died in an unfair way. I have cried, prayed, talked, read about death and I still cry easily when I think of him. Do we learn to live with the grief or does it go away? I don’t want to forget him. Sometimes it feels I'm still in love with a spirit and it will be hard for me to move on because he was everything I had prayed for. I've since stayed to myself more because I feel my friends and family don't understand me. How does this work?! I have children who depend on me, but I find myself longing to be with him.

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Cecy,

Thanks for your note and questions.

Unfair sometimes is the only right word.

You finally found the person who we’d guess you might call your soul mate, and he gets wrenched away from you—and in an unfair way on top of it all.

Crying is perfectly okay. But reading about death is not going to help your broken heart. And you don’t want to learn how to live with grief, what you want to do is to learn how to discover and complete everything that his death left emotionally unfinished for you.

Typically when someone important to us dies, we’re left with a host of things we wish had been different, better, or more; and with unrealized hopes, dreams, and expectations about the future.

In your situation, we’d imagine that it is mostly those unrealized hopes, dreams, and expectations that affect you over and over.

Go to the library or bookstore and get a copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook. As you read it and take the actions it outlines, you’ll see how it helps you with deal with all those things that aren’t going happen because his untimely death robbed you— and him— of the future. Hopefully, you’ll begin to be able to participate more fully in life again and be able to be available to your children.